Salvation

I was brought up in a Southern Baptist church. Brother Robert would preach hellfire and brimstone and the need to put our money in the plate. He would stand in front of the small congregation, sweating like a man condemned, while Shirley Mack played Just As I Am on the piano. We’d sing two or three verses and Brother Robert would say, “If no one comes after this next verse, we’ll close.” Sometimes they came, other times they did not. I walked up that short aisle when I was 13 years old. A fat kid with no real idea of what I was doing. I just thought if I went up there then God would love me. I wanted a father who loved me. I had one at home, but he sometimes showed his love with the strap. I was baptized in the church the following week. And something extraordinary happened. I felt nothing. No, that’s not quite right. I did feel something. I felt guilt and shame for not feeling anything.
I left my home when I was 18 years old (I had actually left the church the year before.) I moved north to a college town hoping to be able to work and pay for some classes. That is where I found my church. It was called the theatre. I found that I was finally good at something. It came naturally to me. It was something I could just do. I had no idea how I was able to know things that I should not have known without training. But I did. I believed it was a gift from God. I still believe that today. Although I believed my talent was God-given, it did not bring me to my knees.
After several plays and no chance at school I moved again. To New York City. It seemed to be the place I needed to be if I were going to pursue my dreams. I found acting work right away. I worked a lot. I began teaching acting between acting gigs. And something else happened which was totally foreign to me. At the age of 22, a girl of 25 with intelligence, beauty, talent, and wisdom asked me out. I was taken aback by the fact that someone such as her would allow herself to be seen with me. Although I had long lost the weight I carried as a child, I had no courage – except on the stage – and I was far from handsome. (Although she did at one time say I was a cross between Elvis and Fred Flintstone.) For the next several years I worked. The love of this girl was my salvation. The love of this girl was my hope. The love of this girl was my life. And then she was gone. After eight years she was gone, taking my life with her.
I moved around a lot after that. I took acting jobs when I could. I took a lot of day jobs. Working on an offshore rig out of Louisiana, selling magazines over the phone, planting rooftop gardens in Manhattan, working baggage at an airport, parking cars, making pizzas, managing a fast food joint, and many more.
The phone call that began my path to Christ came to me from an atheist gay man. He had worked with me in the past and was directing a show in Orlando. Would I come in and do the show? Sure, I thought, why not. You must realize that at this time of my life I believed that a person could not be an actor and a Christian. I know it sounds ridiculous now, but it is what I believed with my whole heart. I met a young woman in that show who was a Christian. She said she would pray for me. I told her not to. She would sit backstage before the show, surrounded by language that no one should have to hear, surrounded by men and women with no shame – who flaunted their bodies for all to see. She sat there and read her Bible and prayed. One night she invited me to pray with her. I’m not sure why I said yes, but I did. She prayed, I sat with my eyes closed. We began praying every night and soon I found myself praying. I began to hear God’s voice. He affirmed in me that it was He who had given me this talent and that I was to use it for His Glory. I asked him how. I received a call from a large and growing church that was looking for someone to write and act in sketches for them. Someone had suggested me. I found that I could write sketches very quickly. After volunteering for a couple of years, I was hired full time.
A few years have passed. Occasionally the question arises, how did you become a Christian? And to this day I am not sure how to answer. Maybe God took me in his hand when I was 13 and wobbling down the aisle and kept me from harm for all those years. Maybe He then introduced me to what love feels like for the first time in my life. Maybe he needed me to experience Art first. To see the beauty in it. To see Him in it. Then he brought me to Himself with that knowledge. How did I come to Christ? He knows. And someday He will tell me. Until that day, I will worship Him with every show I direct and every performance I give.